Call Me Maybe?

I received my email recently from the Garden City Group today, the group that is in charge of Full Tilt claims processing. While I’m excited to finally get my money, they certainly could have done a better job, and I think I could help correct a lot of the problems they’re having. To that end, I submit a very informal job application below.

To: Garden City Group Inc.

Re: You Suck at Claims Administration

Sirs and Madams,

I believe I would be a valuable addition to your company because I can help with the following deficiencies –

1. The email I received from you a few days ago went to my spam folder instead of my inbox. Most of the players I know who received this email had the same problem. I know how to use services like Constant Contact and YMLP.com and could also find a way to get the emails sent from a certified server to ensure that they would very rarely end up in a spam folder. This is a very simple process, and there are tens of thousands of people with this knowledge,and any competent person could figure it out on their own. I can definitely handle this part of your operation.

2. The writing on your site is both terrible and overly technical. Is there a law that says you have to use legal-speak to provide information on claims remissions? Allow me to simplify all of the information on your front page –

“Welcome to the Full Tilt Poker Claims Administration web site. Players with account balances have until November 17th to submit a claim. Account balances will be paid in full unless there isn’t enough money in the fund. If there are not enough funds, players will be paid a prorated amount. If you haven’t received an email from us, and you believe you have an eligible balance, contact us at support@fulltiltclaims.com”

Notice how I turned 800 words of unreadable legalese and overly qualified bullshit into one paragraph? That’s because I’m a reasonably good writer. You should have a guy like me on staff. I’m not a great writer, but apparently I’m a great deal more concise than any of the paralegals that you have writing for the front page of your website. Given that you are administering hundreds of millions of dollars, you might want to spend a few bucks to get a guy like me.

3. Your company seems to have a problem sorting out priorities. First priority, get information to players. Second priority, get players paid as quickly as possible. There may have been conversations in your boardroom that went something like this –

Guy in a Suit – “When should we pay these Full Tilt Poker claims?”

Tech Guy – “I don’t know, maybe Sue would have an opinion on that.”

Sue from Customer Service – “I can’t imagine they are in a hurry, just get around to it in the next year or two and it should be fine.”

Guy in a Suit – “Makes sense to me, they probably don’t care how fast they get it or when they find out if they are going to get the money and how much they are going to get. Just do it eventually. I’m going golfing.”

If I was involved in that meeting as an employee of your company, the conversation would have been more like this –

Guy in a Suit – “When should we pay these Full Tilt Poker claims?”

Fox – “Sir, I think we should pay them as soon as possible. Think about it like your paycheck. If someone took your paycheck and then asked when you want it back, you would want it right away.”

Guy in a Suit – “That’s an interesting piece of insight Mr. Wallace, we had not factored that into our thoughts on the matter so far. Let’s pay these people as soon as we can.”

Fox – “Thank you sir. I also think we should let them know what the timeline will look like right away, possibly on the front page of the website.”

Guy in a Suit – “Good thinking! We were going to keep them in the dark,but I can see how that might bother me if it were my paycheck. Why don’t you guys make that happen while I go golfing.”

4. I’m not an expert web designer, but I can definitely build a better website than the clunky piece of crap that you have up now. Fulltiltpokerclaims.com looks like it was built by a 15 year old kid for their class project in 2001. And they got a C+. From a generous teacher. My blog looks significantly better than the website you put up to administer hundreds of millions of dollars, and I spent twenty minutes of my time and $0.00 designing it. I even know a solid web designer who could make a really good looking site for $1,000 in a day or two if you really wanted to spruce it up, but I could definitely do a better job in twenty minutes on my own.

5. It appears that the company has a customer relations problem. The lack of communication so far has been pretty impressive. No one seems to know how much money is in the fund, how much money is owed to players if everyone claims their funds, or how much you are being paid out of the fund to administer the claims. We could put this information up on the website in abotu two minutes. Icould handle that. I could also hadnle emailing players to let them know that their funds are safe and they will be paid soon, write some useful FAQs (I know you have FAQs on the site, but I stress the word USEFUL), and communicate with players and keep them up to date on the process. I can assure you that players would appreciate this and you wouldn’t have millions of poker players shredding your company on twitter and facebook.

6. I would expect a claims administration company to have a few “math guys” on staff, but your math guys must have left the company just before you got the Full Tilt Claims project. I own a computer, I know how to use a spreadsheet and a calculator, and I could teach members of your staff to use these tools as well. With a few simple calculations we could find out if there was enough money in the fund to pay everyone and let claimants know how much money to expect.

Conclusion –

I can help identify problems within the company and fix them. The problems above have not been acknowledged or dealt with, which leads me to assume that they were never recognized. I identified both the problems, and the solutions, without outside help. I’m a problem solver. Call me? Maybe? I can start tomorrow.

If you enjoy my blog, and you like sports, check out Star Street, a great weekly fantasy sports site. Sign up through MY LINK and play a few games for free!

If you enjoyed this blog, please support it by buying my book or joining a fantasy sports sites through my links

This entry was posted on September 19, 2013, 10:59 pm and is filed under General, Poker Advice. You can follow any responses to this entry through RSS 2.0.
You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

The thing that you forgot fox is that the longer they hold on to the money the more interest it makes which has to go to someones pocket. So whose pocket do you think it goes into? They do not care if or when you get paid as long as they can hold the money for as long as they can and the interest it creates to boot.